


The Great Wahoonie

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ankh-Morpork, F/M, Lancre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 12:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: In one leg of the Trousers of Time, Esme Weatherwax doesn't watch Mustrum Ridcully walk away. She goes with him.





	The Great Wahoonie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterwoman/gifts).



The high meadows of Lancre, clinging as they did to the bare minimum of mountain space that wasn't actually vertical, were an ideal spot for a young man and a young woman to lose themselves on a sweet summer day. Quite apart from anything else, the chance that any other interested parties might follow them up there was slim. Nobody would climb a path like that without a bloody good reason.

 

Esme Weatherwax sat on a cliff, and watched a river crash off the edge of a waterfall close by. If she'd been of a romantic turn of mind, she might have said that the sun turned the drops of water to diamonds. Instead, she was thinking partly about the Disc, and how the water got back here once it had fallen off the edge, and partly about her companion, and whatever it was he was working himself up to say.

 

If it was an offer of marriage, she had already decided the answer would be no.

 

"Mind the edge," Mustrum Ridcully said.

 

"I am minding it," Esme said, but she turned her head and smiled at him by way of a concession.

 

He smiled back. He always smiled back at her, and paid her attention, and forgot about other girls - more pliable girls, less snappish ones, more attentive ones. Esme's mother had hinted, Gytha Ogg had done rather more than hint, and even Goody Parkin had remarked that, well, a witch needn’t be single. If she wanted.

 

Esme still wasn't going to marry him.

 

"Please get away from the edge, I want to talk to you."

 

Esme considered this, and then got to her feet and joined him. Her witch-black didn't contrast with his farmer's-son clothes the way she knew it would one day with flashy wizard's robes, but the ghost of the future was there, reminding her they both had destinies. And that neither one knew what those were.

 

"Can't imagine what you think you could say that would make me fling myself off a cliff," she said, pointed.

 

Mustrum grinned. "I'm more worried about you flinging me off a cliff."

 

He sat down on the soft grass of the meadow and looked hopefully at her until she unbent enough to sit next to him. He had strong shoulders and warm arms. She didn’t at all mind leaning against him.

 

"I've got a place," he said, "at the University, in Ankh-Morpork."

 

"Congratulations," Esme said. She'd seen it in her shamble three weeks ago and had broken several things out of sheer surprise and indignation that they were to be parted.

 

"But this means," Mustrum began, hesitantly. "This means we can't... get married. Wizards don't."

 

"I know," Esme said. "And I think it's for the best that we don't get married now."

 

Mustrum spluttered. Esme tried to tell if he was insulted or hurt or both, and rapidly gave it up as a bad job.

 

"We're not ready to be married," she said. " _I'm_ too mean. _You_ do whatever I tell you to. We'd just -"

 

"I do _not_ ," Mustrum said automatically (and inaccurately). "I think we could be very happy. And we're eighteen, that's a good age."

 

"Not for us," Esme said firmly.

 

There was a short silence.

 

"I don't want you to think this decision was easy," Mustrum said. He looked like he might cry. "I might not see you again for years. Maybe never. I'll miss you, Esme."

 

He kissed her. He was an extremely good kisser; Esme decided to participate, and enjoy the kiss while he worked the drama out of his system.

 

"Who says you have to miss me?" she said. "I could go to Ankh-Morpork too. I've not got a steading yet, and the world is out there. Seems a shame not to see it."

 

Mustrum's eyes had gone bright with something better than tears. "Have you been talking to Gytha?"

 

"She had a lot of nonsense ideas about coming along to protect my virtue." Esme snorted. "Ha! Her protect _virtue_. Might as well set a stoat to guard a henhouse."

 

"Henhouses be damned." Mustrum fell onto his back in the meadow, and tugged Esme down with him. "It'll be dangerous, you know. The journey. And Ankh-Morpork itself."

 

"I'm a witch," Esme said testily. "What have I got to be afraid of?"

 

Mustrum grinned.

 

"Esme Weatherwax," he said. "Will you come with me to Ankh-Morpork? And possibly live in sin at least part of the time? Regardless of whether or not you bring Gytha?"

 

"Since you ask so nicely," Esme said. She took her witch's hat off and laid it neatly on a nearby rock, out of the way, and then she kissed Mustrum again.

 

Ankh-Morpork, she felt, had a lot to teach them both.

 


End file.
